The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
BONUS: Preparing for the Bible in a Year Journey
Sun, 29 Dec 2024
Are you getting ready to read the Bible in a year? Fr. Mike shares why it's worth following the Bible in a Year journey and how to prepare for this life-changing adventure. He explains how the reading plan works, how to build a listening habit, and how to persevere along the year when it gets tough. He reminds us that it is our "why" that ultimately shapes our "way" through the Bible. He also shares practical resources that can help us get the most out of the Bible in a Year journey. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.
Chapter 1: What is the Bible in a Year podcast about?
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Today, we're going to do something a little bit differently.
Chapter 2: How can I start the Bible in a Year journey?
We're actually going to kind of have a relaunch, some tips and offer some steps you can take if you are either restarting the Bible in a Year, or if you were starting it fresh and you wonder like, how do I do this? Like, how do you actually go through the Bible in a Year on a podcast or on any kind of listening device or through YouTube, like how do I do this kind of thing?
We've done it for a year and we want you to join us this upcoming year. And so over the course of this last year, we've learned some things. Some of the things we learned are what works when it comes to the Bible in a year, what doesn't work when it comes to trying to get through the Bible in a year. And so to begin, a couple of words. One is thank you. Thank you for even being interested.
If you found this page, if you found this podcast, I really, truly believe that that is because God is doing something in your heart. Even if you're simply searching, that's no small thing. That's actually a significant thing. In fact, what we believe as Christians is that every time we pray, it's always a response.
So every time we search for the Lord, it's actually not us initiating that search. It's always, always us responding to his searching for us. And so I just want to encourage you. So you hopefully realize that if you find yourself here, that's because God has moved in your heart in some unique way. So that's the first thing. We just have to acknowledge that, that God cares about you. You're loved.
you matter, okay? So that's number one. Number two is, so why in the world would we even have the Bible in the year? You know, there are times when the year gets long. There are times when we make commitments and we start out really fresh with a lot of steam, like we start out like gung-ho, ready to go, and then we lose our way.
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Chapter 3: What are the key reasons for reading the Bible in a year?
And as many famous people have said, you lose your way when you lose your why, right? And so I want to share with you, why did we do this podcast? Why do we do this YouTube channel? Why do we want to go through the Bible in here? And the main reason is because I think we live in a world that can often be troubling. We live in a world that is broken. We live in a world that's good, but broken.
And a lot of times we don't know the story and we don't know actually how does God fit into a world that's good, but broken, right? How do we fit into a world that's good but broken? How do we interact with people who are also good but broken? So we go to the Bible and in God's word, we find not just his story, which is the most important thing in the world. We also find our story.
We don't just find our story. We find our place in his story. And what the Bible does, what opening yourself up to the word does is is it reshapes our lens. It gives us the opportunity to actually see the world through God's eyes and actually see God through God's eyes as he's revealed himself to be. Too often, I think so many of us have this distorted view of God.
We have a distorted view of ourselves. We have a distorted view of other people. And one of the things the Bible does is it corrects that. It's got corrective lenses, right? It gives us a restored vision of here's God saying, this is what I'm really like. God's saying, here's what you really are. Yes, broken, but don't forget how good you are. In fact, don't forget how worth you are to me.
What's your worth to God? Well, God himself says that you are worth his very death. And also, we get a restored vision of what it is to be human so we can see other people as God sees them as well. And so the Bible in here is meant to be that, is an opportunity just day by day, piece by piece, bit by bit, moment by moment, to have that lens of our vision and our heart reshaped.
So we can not only see how God sees, but also love how God loves. That's what's behind the whole thing. Next is, so what's the Great Adventure Bible? Well, Jeff Gabins created this thing called the Great Adventure Bible Timeline. And his experience was probably like a lot of ours. And that was, he was reading through the Bible, you know, start with Genesis, great. Exodus, great story.
And then you hit Leviticus and you lose the story. And so one of the things he did when he was a pastor, he was raised Catholic, left the Catholic church for a while, became a pastor. And then he came back to the Catholic church and brought this Great Adventure Bible Timeline with him. When he came back, he brought a way to say, how can we read the Bible so that we don't lose the narrative thread?
How can we read the Bible in such a way that we get the story while we're reading all the words? I think sometimes, right, we miss the forest for the trees. We miss the story for all the details that kind of distract us from the story. They're very important words, obviously. They're very important other books of the Bible. But he narrowed down to essentially 14 time periods.
over 16 books of the Bible that if you stick with these time periods, if you stick with these books, you'll get the whole story. And so what we did is, people at Ascension, really smart people, really holy people, what they did is they sat down, took Jeff's Great Adventure Bible timeline, that reading plan, and said, okay, now here's the story. Where do the other books fit in the story?
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Chapter 4: How does the Great Adventure Bible help with reading?
not only do i every day when i go through this i check off the day but it's really helpful to develop habits now i mentioned that people lose their way when they lose their why and self-discipline is good but it only goes so far at some point our discipline runs out But our why never really runs out. Like the reason why we're doing something never really runs out.
So before we go any further, my invitation for you is going to be this, is going to be ask yourself the question or even ask the Lord the question, why do I want to do this? Why do I want to go through the Bible like this in such a way that actually changes the way that I see the world, that I see the Lord and I see myself? Why does that matter to you?
You could say, well, because it changes the way I see God, see the world and see myself. Great. That's awesome. But why does that matter to you? Because the day will come when it's, I don't feel like it. So what is your why? I think that some people rely a lot on motivation and that's not a problem, but we have to realize that motivation is not about having a lot of passion about something.
Motivation is having a motive. So what is your motive? Another way to say it is what is your why for wanting to read the Bible? For me, It was this, it was, I want to see the way the Lord sees. I want to love the way the Lord loves. That's it.
I found myself getting distracted and distressed by all the other voices that I was listening to and by all the chaos in our culture, our country, in our church. And I thought, I bet, I know the Lord has something to say about this. And I got to tell you, as often as I return to the word like this, in this way that we've been doing it, we will do it for 365 days.
When I return to the Lord's word like this, I have to, I tell you, there's a sense of peace. There's a sense of calm. There's this sense of, this isn't just the wisdom of the world. This is the wisdom of the word. that has penetrated my life. So how do you, you have a why, but then how do you develop a habit? One of the things that I love to have is the habit. And so I always pick a time.
And that's the thing is, if we're going to do something consistently, we need to know when we're going to do it. And so my invitation is pick a time. And now I invite people, don't pick a time that you will do on your best day. Pick a time you can do on your average day. Maybe not on your worst day, but on your average day. And in that, I invite you to integrate the podcast into your daily life.
That's a fancy way of saying, give yourself permission to listen wherever it helps you to listen. So as an example, I know some people who they sit in their favorite chair or they sit at their kitchen table and they've got their Bible in front of them and they've got their pens and they've got their earphones in or maybe they're playing on the speakers on their phone or whatever that thing is.
And that's how they do it. That's what helps them get through. And so they never lose sight because they're listening and reading. Super good. If that's what helps you, perfect. But create that space that helps integrate, right? So it penetrates. But I know others who say, you know, my morning routine is I get up, I press play, start brushing my teeth, and that's how I move on.
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Chapter 5: Why is having a 'why' important for reading the Bible?
I'm so excited about this. But also we have this thing called the Bible in Your Companion. The Bible in Your Companion, it's got a lot of information that can really, really help because I kind of go through a lot of information, but there's some stuff I don't cover right in the commentary because just like there's so much to talk about. But for example, we're in the
patriarchs concluding the patriarchs and introducing the exodus egypt and exodus they will have a here's a key events and figures in this new timeline to be able to have this what changes what changes from patriarchs to egypt the exodus has some questions you can reflect on has um basically they just have even as pictures and some maps in here that can be really really helpful some prayers to help you kind of dive more deeply into the word and ask the lord to open up your hearts
This is really, really helpful. Volume one is available. Volume one is days one to 120. You realize there's 365 days. That means there's three volumes forthcoming. This physical book is available. Sometimes it's not available, right? Sometimes people buy all these books and they're not available in physical form, but they are available in ebook form. So Keep that in mind if you're interested.
For days 121 to 243, which is volume two, for those of you who are keeping track, that's going to keep it out for that, volume two, in the spring of 2022. So that's coming out relatively soon, depending on when you're watching or listening to this. We also have the Bible in Your Notebook.
The idea behind that is, so this is the Bible in Your Companion, has more information to kind of supplement the information that I'm giving, what you're listening to. Super helpful. The Bible in your notebook is so you can capture your thoughts. We have that. We also have, it's called the Insight Journal. An Insight Journal, I really like this. It's hardcover. It's really simple.
It's a really elegant, simple journal. The idea behind it, it's called Insight Journal, is as often as you read or hear something in scripture, That can easily go in one ear and out the other. And so the Insight Journal was created with the idea that God wants you to capture what he's telling you, what he's revealing to you. It is really, it would be really rare.
It'd be kind of almost even unthinkable to imagine that here is God who has gone to all of this trouble to reveal himself, to reveal his heart, to reveal his goodness, and then reveal it to us and actually even calling us to listen to the Bible in a year and and not want us to remember what he revealed. But so often that's what happens. We just forget what he's revealed.
So the Insight Journal in the Bible in Your Notebook is also just an incredible opportunity to say, okay, this is what I wanna capture. This is what I don't want to forget as I'm moving forward. So that's really, really important. Okay, couple last things. As you're approaching this year, I just want to encourage you, don't get discouraged.
Persevere to get some of these tools that can really help you. But more than anything, I think one of the tools that really helps most people is, I'm going to say the S word, subscribe. If you are willing to subscribe to this podcast, if you're starting it for the first time to get daily notifications of the new episodes. If you're already subscribed, you're going to get daily updates.
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Chapter 6: What habits can help develop a consistent Bible reading routine?
Different insights, which is even better. To be able to have the Bible in a Year in Spanish is an incredible gift, not only to the native Spanish speakers, but also to those people who are in ministry to Spanish speakers.
It just, how incredible is it to be able to hear the Bible in a language that you're trying to learn or a Bible that you want to get more even adept at being able to communicate the gospel to others who their native language or their first language is Spanish. What an incredible gift.
So whether your first language is Spanish, whether you're trying to dive more deeply into Spanish, we have the Great Adventure Bible in Spanish, as well as this Bible in the Air in Spanish. If you want to subscribe to that, Or you can just find out more information about the Great Adventure Bible in Spanish. You can go to ascensionpress.com slash la biblia. That's L-A-B-I-B-L-I-A, la biblia.
But I just want a last word. I know I've probably said that already. This last year has been an incredible gift. It's been an incredible journey. incredible community. I am looking forward to being part of this community this upcoming year as well. Not merely as the narrator, but as someone who I know my heart and I know my mind, that my heart needs to be penetrated by God's word.
My mind needs to constantly, constantly be transformed and renewed. And so I cannot wait to re-begin. And I hope that you join me for this upcoming journey not expecting perfection, because perfection is not an expectation, but just planning on never losing our way because we never lose our why. Maybe your why is because the Lord has placed it in your heart. that it's time.
It's time to let him talk to you. You might have been doing a lot of talking to the Lord over the course of your life, and now I think it's time for him to talk to us. So, I don't know. I just want to let you know that I truly am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike, and I cannot wait to go on this journey with you. See you tomorrow. God bless.
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